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Brian Tesler CBE (born 19 February 1929) is a retired British television entertainment producer and senior executive. His career encompassed British television's post-war evolution from a single-channel BBC to the arrival of multiple terrestrial, satellite and cable channels in the 1990s. After experience in radio presentation with the British Forces Broadcasting Service in the 1940s he began in television as a light entertainment producer and director for BBC Television in 1952, producing mainly panel shows before gaining experience and working his way upwards to producing larger and more significant programmes. He moved to Britain's fledgling independent commercial television service ITV in 1957, joining Associated Television (ATV), who held the franchise for weekends in London. Here he took over ITV's biggest variety show, Sunday Night at the London Palladium.

In 1960 Tesler moved into executive management by becoming Supervisor of Features and Light Entertainment at ABC Weekend TV which provided commercial television for the North of England and the Midlands. Tesler was promoted to be ABC's Programme Controller in 1962 and two years later Director of Programmes. In 1968 he became Director of Programmes at Thames Television which provided weekday programmes in London.

In 1974 Tesler was invited to become Deputy Managing Director of London Weekend Television (LWT) and in 1976 he became LWT's Chief Executive. He resigned in 1990, remaining Deputy Chairman until his retirement from television in 1994.

Early life

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Tesler was born in Stepney in East London on 19 February 1929.[1] His Jewish father, David, came to England from Ukraine in 1916, setting up his own hatmaking business.[2] His mother, Esther Hyman, also Jewish, was born in Mile End in East London, her parents having emigrated from Russia in about 1893. Her father was a baker.[3]

Tesler was educated at the Chiswick County School for Boys in West London.[1] As well as its academic excellence and absence of antisemitism Tesler found the extra-curricular activities there, including its drama opportunities, to be to his liking.[4] Tesler loved the music hall and variety shows and was a regular visitor to the major entertainment theatres in London. In later life he credited his youthful enjoyment of all aspects of show business as a valuable self-education which prepared him for his career in light entertainment.[5]

One of the teachers at his school encouraged Tesler’s interest in reading, turning it into a love of English literature, and persuaded him that a University of Oxford degree in English was something to which he could aspire. Another teacher, responsible for the school’s drama projects, encouraged Tesler’s growing interest in the theatre by casting him prominently and successfully in school plays.[6] Tesler won a scholarship for a university place to be taken up after his two year National Service in the Army.[1][7][8]

Tesler was mustered in the Royal Artillery in the summer of 1947[7][8] but after auditioning was posted to the British Forces Broadcasting Service (BFBS) radio station in Trieste in Northern Italy as a presenter.[7] He stayed in the BFBS in Trieste until he was demobilised in September 1949.[9]

Tesler’s scholarship took him to Exeter College, Oxford in Autumn 1949 to read English Literature and Language.[1] After three years during which there was some concern from his tutors that he was spending more time with show business activities than his studies, he graduated in 1952 with a First Class Honours Degree, with the highest marks in his year, in English.[1][7][8] While at Oxford Tesler was a member of the Oxford University Dramatic Society (OUDS), joined the reporting team on The Isis Magazine,[10] sang occasionally with the University Jazz Club and wrote and sold songs with fellow student, the composer Stanley Myers.[7]

Career

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BBC Television

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Tesler joined BBC Television as a trainee Light Entertainment producer in 1952,[1] recruited on a six-months trial.[7] His first television production, which he also directed, was a musical show called Starlight starring Pat Kirkwood singing and dancing to the music of Eric Robinson's orchestra.[1] It was transmitted on 2 January 1953.[11] Tesler followed this with similar programmes starring Joyce Grenfell[12] and the singing duo Pearl Carr and Teddy Johnson[13]

Tesler then rescued a failing panel-game, Down You Go!,[14] which encouraged the BBC to make him producer of a new panel-game for Sunday nights, called Why?.[15] This, however, was "a resounding flop", as Tesler wrote later.[16] It was cancelled after only three shows.[17] Despite this failure Tesler was put in charge of the Light Entertainment Department's output of panel games, both finding and producing or supervising them,[17][18][19] which he proceeded to do by introducing Guess My Story,[20] Find the Link, Tall Story Club,[21] One of the Family[22] and The Name's the Same,[23] as well as having overall responsibility for the long-running What's My Line?.[17][24][25]

Tesler quickly gained in experience and while continuing to produce panel games he worked his way upwards at the BBC, developing and producing larger and more significant shows. He produced a pilot show for a possible new series written by the radio writers Frank Muir and Denis Norden for the husband and wife light comedy team, Bernard Braden and Barbara Kelly. Barbara with Braden transmitted in July 1953[26] and was well-received by the critics,[27] though the series did not appear for another two years, and was then titled Bath-Night With Braden. It was the first comedy show to transmit on a weekly basis rather than once a fortnight.[28] And So to Bentley, a series also written by Muir and Nordern, featuring the Australian comic actor Dick Bentley with Peter Sellers and Bill Fraser, was regarded as a flop,[29] but showed Tesler had increasing confidence in comedy direction and confirmed to him the value of a live studio audience.[30][31] Fast and Loose was another comedy series, this time written by Bob Monkhouse and Dennis Goodwin. It was the first series to show their talents as performers as well as writers.[32]

Tesler's musical talents encouraged him to develop music shows was well as comedy. Among them was Music and Magic, described by Radio Times as "a miscellany of music, dance and illusion",[33] which featured illusionists like David Nixon and performers like Frankie Vaughan together with some technical trickery.[34] Tesler broke some boundaries with We Got Rhythm, a show with an all-black cast of singers, dancers and cabaret artistes, including Leslie "Hutch" Hutchinson.[35] Frank Chacksfield's light music orchestra was of symphonic size but Tesler was able to use all the television techniques then at his disposal to convert what would otherwise be essentially a radio programme into a television show spectacular.[36] The television spectacle of The Great Little Tilley was only possible by Tesler organising a two-studio production utilising studios D and E at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios in West London, staging dramatic sequences about the life and times of the male impersonator Vesta Tilley in one studio and her music hall performing sequences in the other, while Pat Kirkwood as Tilley in a live production was forced to rush backwards and forwards between the two.[37]

In January 1955, after two years under contract to BBC Television, Tesler signed with the BBC for a further two years. His new contract barred him from working for any of the new commercial television stations being set up to launch Independent Television (ITV) in Britain.[38] Tesler later wrote in his autobiography that "the idea of working in the cut-throat commercial world was repugnant," and that he felt his future at the BBC held plenty of attractive production prospects.[39] At the time he was in the middle of the first season of Ask Pickles, a popular television vehicle for the radio star Wilfred Pickles.

With Ask Pickles, Tesler invented British television's first "sentimental"[40] request show in which viewers could have their wishes come true. Pickles wanted to expand into television and to do that Tesler devised a new show. "Wilfred Pickles invites you to Ask Pickles for the things you would like to see and hear," announced Radio Times.[41] Tesler's office received as many as 10,000 request letters a week from viewers and Ask Pickles became the most popular show on television,[42] scoring appreciation ratings in the 90s.[40] Tesler won the first ever Light Entertainment (Production) Award from the Guild of Television Producers and Directors (now the British Academy of Film and Television Arts [BAFTA])[43] for Ask Pickles in December 1957.

Another radio star who wanted to break into television was the bandleader Billy Cotton. Tesler was given the task of devising a television version of Cotton's long-running Sunday lunchtime BBC Radio show. As a music hall devotee and avid radio listener, Tesler knew Cotton's act well and knew what would work. He brought in a comedy scriptwriter, engaged guest artistes for comedy routines with Cotton and the band, and even persuaded the portly 60-year-old Cotton to join in dance routines with a line of female dancers, The Leslie Roberts Silhouettes.[44] The Billy Cotton Band Show became a long-running light entertainment success for BBC Television for some twelve years, Tesler producing it for its first season.[45][46]

Towards the end of that first season with Cotton, it was announced by Val Parnell, the chief executive of Associated Television (ATV), that Tesler, "one of television's top producers", would join the staff of ATV on 1 January 1957.[47] As Tesler's BBC contract was drawing to a close at the end of 1956 he was offered a further two years, but the BBC refused to increase his pay, saying, as later reported by Tesler, "working for the BBC is reward enough".[48] Discovering that a disappointed Tesler might be available, Parnell and his deputy, Lew Grade, offered Tesler double his BBC salary for three years with an annual expenses-paid trip to New York to study US television thrown in. His views on commercial television expressed two years previously had changed. "Personally I think that this is the right time for me, having enjoyed the privileges of BBC television," he told TV Mirror, "to go out into the cut-and-thrust of commercial tv."[11] ATV held the major ITV contracts for the weekends in London and weekdays in the English Midlands and was eager to transmit a lot of light entertainment, Tesler's speciality.

Tesler completed the first season of the Billy Cotton Band Show and initiated and produced the first two programmes of a new series starring Petula Clark,[49]and cast and laid out the rest of the series, before leaving the BBC after four years.[11]

Independent Television

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Tesler started at Associated Television in London on 1 January 1957.[8] He was to produce his initial show for the company, an edition of Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular, for live transmission on 19 January. He told his bosses, Parnell and Lew Grade, that he wanted the singer, dancer and comedian Dickie Henderson to star in it. Parnell tried to veto the choice as he and Henderson had fallen out. Tesler, however, had a clause in his contract that allowed him the power to cast his own programmes. He insisted on Henderson being the star and Parnell was forced to allow it. The show was so popular and Henderson's performance judged so impressive[50] that Parnell encouraged Tesler to bring him back four more times for the Saturday show.[51][52]

Tesler became Parnell's favoured producer for Saturday Spectacular.[50] In 1957, Tesler's first year at ATV, he produced Saturday night specials with some of the top British comedy stars of the time like Max Bygraves, Frankie Howerd, Benny Hill, and Norman Wisdom, Americans like Rosemary Clooney, Ray Bolger and Johnnie Ray, and old-time entertainment idols like Jack Buchanan and George Formby.[52] This series of entertainment specials, which ran from November 1956 to March 1961 (though in the last year or so without Tesler as he left ATV at the end of 1959) performed well for audience appreciation, occasionally making it into that week's ten most-watched programmes.[53]

While he continued to produce Saturday Spectacular, Tesler was asked by Parnell to take over running Sunday Night at the London Palladium in the autumn of 1957. This show was transmitted 39 weeks a year from the West End's premier variety theatre. It was first broadcast in September 1955 so had been running for two seasons by the time Tesler took it over and in that time only 4 editions had failed to make the Top 10 of British television's most popular programmes. In its heyday 28-million viewers watched it, at that time nearly half the population of the United Kingdom.[54][55][56][57] The comedian Tommy Trinder had always been the compère of the show, but Tesler considered him "old hat" and wanted to replace him. Despite the viewing figures, Tesler also thought the show "had become routine, its novelty and glamour ... fading".[58] To enliven the show Parnell agreed to let Tesler bring in the precision dance troupe the Tiller Girls and asked him to find a way to replace Trinder, who had rattled Tesler already and had offended Parnell and Grade so much they had decided not renew his contract for the 1958-59 season.[59]

For the first few months of the 1957-58 season Trinder was taking time off from the Palladium for an extended tour of South Africa.[59] Tesler took the opportunity to engage various compères to take his place temporarily in order to pick the best of them to take over in autumn 1958 when Trinder’s contract would not be renewed. He tried out Dickie Henderson, Bob Monkhouse, Hughie Green, Alfred Marks and Robert Morley, each for a few weeks.[56] At the same time, Tesler was producing a show called New Look, with a team of young, mostly unknown, performers, chosen by Tesler. Among them was an all-round dancer, musician and comedian, Bruce Forsyth, who caught Parnell’s attention. Tesler and Parnell knew immediately that in Forsyth they had found their new Palladium compère.[59][60] After a couple of successful tryouts on the Sunday shows Forsyth was engaged full-time to replace Trinder for the 1958-59 season.[60][61] Within weeks audience figures rose to over 14 million households.[54]

Tesler's show New Look was a studio-based revue with a regular team of young all-round entertainers who could gain television experience and possibly be moulded into star material. Tesler chose wisely. Among them, including Forsyth, were Jack Douglas, Joyce Blair and her brother Lionel Blair, Ronnie Stevens, Jeremy Lloyd and Roy Castle. When Parnell saw Castle in the pilot of New Look he immediately put him into the 1958 Royal Variety Performance.[52]

Tesler continued a heavy production schedule at ATV, making at least one Saturday Spectacular a month and sometimes more often, featuring artistes of the like of Harry Secombe, Bernard Bresslaw, Dave King and Arthur Askey.[52] Once New Look was completed Lew Grade also asked Tesler to come up with an idea to feature the West End's latest showplace, a theatre-restaurant named The Talk of the Town. Tesler brought in outside broadcast cameras to cover live a floorshow in the first half of the programme and a big name cabaret act in the second. Tesler also composed the music for the opening titles.[62] Live from Talk of the Town had a short run in December 1959. Hosted by Noele Gordon it starred among others, Diana Dors, John Bentley, Beryl Reid and Bruce Forsyth. The series ended with a gala edition on New Year's Eve 1959.[63]

Live from Talk of the Town was Tesler's last production for ATV. He had decided he would become a freelancer at the end of his ATV contract so that he could have freedom to pick the shows he wanted to produce. He left ATV on 31 December 1959.[64]

Resolving to become a freelance producer, Tesler lined up contracts with both ATV and the BBC at the beginning of 1960,[65] but before they could begin he was approached by Howard Thomas, the managing director of ABC Weekend TV.[66] ABC held the commercial television franchises for weekends in the North of England and the English Midlands and was one of the so-called "Big Four" companies that between them produced most of the ITV networked programmes.[67] Thomas invited Tesler to become ABC's Supervisor of Features and Light Entertainment. Thomas offered him a "free hand" answerable only to him.[66] Tesler was wary of becoming a programme executive at this point in his career, feeling that for the time being he wanted to stay as a producer.[68] "I would miss the sheer fun of it," he wrote later, "the thrilling danger of a live production; the exhilaration of seeing something come off ... live, on air."[69] Thomas persisted, however, and Tesler, having been shown ABC's state-of-the-art new production studios at Teddington in west London[70] accompanied by Thomas' further persuasive efforts,[71] accepted and joined ABC in February 1960 to be in charge of everything ABC transmitted other than drama and outside broadcasts.[66][72]

As Director of Programmes at ABC-TV and Thames Television during the 1960s and 1970s, he oversaw the first British television shows of Frank Sinatra, Jack Benny, Sammy Davis Jr, Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby. He introduced ITV's first weekly series dedicated to the arts with Tempo; British television's first late night chat show with Eamonn Andrews Live from London and its first hidden camera show Candid Camera (based on the American original) with Bob Monkhouse. Programmes he commissioned included Thank Your Lucky Stars, Callan, The Benny Hill Show, Public Eye and The World at War.[73]

Tesler was a founder-director of both Thames Television and Channel 4; managing director and then chairman and managing director of London Weekend Television; and the founder-chairman of ITV's first venture into satellite broadcasting with SuperChannel. During his career, he worked for four superiors: Ronnie Waldman, Lew Grade, Howard Thomas and John Freeman; and when he became a broadcasting boss himself he appointed four future significant figures: Jeremy Isaacs as his Controller of Features at Thames; Michael Grade, John Birt and Greg Dyke successively as his Directors of Programmes at LWT. In the 1990s he served on the Board of Governors of the British Film Institute.[74]

Tesler retired in 1994, and has written two books about his life and career. The first, Before I Forget, published in 2006, described his family life, growing up in London's East End Jewish community before and during the Second World War. The second, The Best Of Times, published in 2016, is an in-depth account of his professional career as a producer of light entertainment in the 1950s and 1960s and then as a senior executive in independent television from the 1970s until 1994. [75]

In December 2019 he was presented by Lord Michael Grade with the Television and Radio Industries Club's Special Award for his contribution to British television.[76]

Bibliography

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  • Before I Forget: A Personal Memoir[77]
  • The Best Of Times: A Personal History of British Television 1952-1994[75]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ a b c d e f g June Roberts, "Brian Tesler, Director of programmes", Talk of Thames, Thames Television, London, England, September 1969.
  2. ^ Tesler 2006, pp. 11, 12.
  3. ^ Tesler 2006, pp. 10, 13.
  4. ^ Tesler 2006, p. 49.
  5. ^ Tesler 2006, p. 27.
  6. ^ Tesler 2006, p. 67.
  7. ^ a b c d e f Richard Last, "A profitable Weekend", Daily Telegraph, London, England, 14 June 1976, p9.
  8. ^ a b c d Max North, "Biggest Break Yet For Brian, The Bright Young Man", Manchester Evening News, Manchester, England, 22 January 1960, p3.
  9. ^ Tesler 2006, p. 90.
  10. ^ "Pooter: Oxford", Times, London, England, 9 December 1967, p21.
  11. ^ a b c Kenneth Ullyett, "I'm getting three years is hard", TV Mirror, London, England, 22 December 1956
  12. ^ "Joyce Grenfell". BBC Archive.
  13. ^ "Teddy Johnson and Pearl Carr". BBC Archive.
  14. ^ "Down you Go!". BBC Archive.
  15. ^ "Why?". BBC Archive.
  16. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 46.
  17. ^ a b c Clifford Davis, "Quiz Kid with the crazy touch", Daily Mirror, London, England, 3 December 1953, p2.
  18. ^ Edward Bishop, "Television Topics", Birmingham Weekly Post, Birmingham, England, 30 July 1954, p7.
  19. ^ L.Marsland Gander, "TV To Try Out 8 Panel Games", Daily Telegraph, London, England. 28 May 1954, p9.
  20. ^ "Guess My Story". BBC Archive.
  21. ^ "Tall Story Club". BBC Archive.
  22. ^ "One of the Family". BBC Archive.
  23. ^ "The Name's the Same". BBC Archive.
  24. ^ "Brian Tesler to Join ATV in January", The Stage, London, England, 22 November 1956, p12.
  25. ^ "What's My Line?". BBC Archive.
  26. ^ "Barbara with Braden". BBC Archive.
  27. ^ Joan Purdon, "Point of View", Leicester Chronicle, Leicester, England, 8 August 1953, p5.
  28. ^ "Bath-Night with Braden". BBC Archive.
  29. ^ Lewis, Roger (1995). The Life and Death of Peter Sellers. Arrow. p. 292. ISBN 978-0-09-974700-0. Retrieved 4 August 2012.
  30. ^ "And So to Bentley". BBC Archive.
  31. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 63.
  32. ^ "Fast and Loose". BBC Archive.
  33. ^ "Friday Television", Radio Times, London, England, 6 April 1956, p40
  34. ^ "Music and Magic". BBC Archive.
  35. ^ "We Got Rhythm". BBC Archive.
  36. ^ "Frank Chacksfield and his Orchestra". BBC Archive.
  37. ^ "The Great Little Tilley". BBC Archive.
  38. ^ Our Radio Correspondent, "BBC Sign TV Producer", Daily Telegraph, London, England, 23 February 1955, p8.
  39. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 67.
  40. ^ a b Peter Black, "A Generation Ago - Peter Black on the rise of television in the early Fifties", The Listener, London, England, vol82, no2110, 4 September 1969, p308.
  41. ^ "Friday Television Programmes", Radio Times, London, England, 21 May 1954, p44
  42. ^ Max North, "A Poser for the Golden Boy", Manchester Evening News, Manchester, England, 20 May 1955, p55.
  43. ^ Pett, E (2020). "The Invisible Institution? Reconstructing the History of BAFTA and the 1958 Merger of the British Film Academy with the Guild of Television Producers and Directors" (PDF). UEA. p. 19. Archived (PDF) from the original on 16 October 2022. Retrieved 5 August 2022.
  44. ^ Bill Cotton, Double Bill: 80 Years of Entertainment, Fourth Estate Limited, London, 2000, p45, ISBN 1841153273.
  45. ^ "The Billy Cotton Band Show". BBC Archive.
  46. ^ John Maxwell, The Greatest Billy Cotton Band Show, Jupiter London, England, 1976, ISBN 9780904041316
  47. ^ "Brian Tesler to Join ATV in January", The Stage, London, England, 22 November 1956, p12.
  48. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 77.
  49. ^ "The Petula Clark Show". BBC Archive.
  50. ^ a b "The Duce of Entertainment: Comedy, commercial TV and Val Parnell". British Comedy Guide.
  51. ^ "The Dickie Henderson Show (1957)". British Comedy Guide.
  52. ^ a b c d Mark Lewisohn, Radio Times Guide to TV Comedy, BBC Worldwide Ltd, London, England, 1998, ISBN 0563369779
  53. ^ Jack Kibble-White and Steve Williams, The Encyclopaedia of Classic Saturday Night Telly, Allison & Busby Limited, London, England, 2007, ISBN 9780749080310
  54. ^ a b "Sunday Night at the London Palladium". Television Heaven.
  55. ^ "Sunday Night At The London Palladium". British Comedy Guide.
  56. ^ a b "Sunday Night at the London Palladium (1955-74)". British Film Institute.
  57. ^ Chris Woodward, The London Palladium: The Story of the Theatre and its Stars, Jeremy Mills Publishing, Huddersfield, England, 2009, p181, ISBN 9781906600396.
  58. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 91.
  59. ^ a b c "This Town Ain't Big Enough For The Both Of Us: Comedy Rivalries". British Comedy Guide.
  60. ^ a b Bruce Forsyth, Bruce: The Autobiography, Pan Books, London, England, 2002, pp114, 115, ISBN 0330488767
  61. ^ "'Break' for Forsyth". The Stage, London, England, 11 September 1958, p6.
  62. ^ Tesler 2026, p. 99.
  63. ^ "Delfont, Lord Bernard (1909-1994)". BFI screenonline.
  64. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 99.
  65. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 102.
  66. ^ a b c Thomas 1977, p. 177.
  67. ^ "ABC Television". BFI screen online.
  68. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 105.
  69. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 107.
  70. ^ Thomas 1977, p. 174.
  71. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 106.
  72. ^ Tesler 2016, p. 111.
  73. ^ "The World at War | History Today".
  74. ^ "Written Answers to Questions - National Heritage - Public Bodies". Parliamentary Debates (Hansard). House of Commons. 8 February 1994. col. 125–126.
  75. ^ a b Dyke, Greg (17 November 2016). "The memoirs of Brian Tesler: the man who put Bruce Forsyth on the box". Royal Television Society. Retrieved 23 January 2024.
  76. ^ "Membership (Brian Tesler)". Television and Radio Industries Club. Archived from the original on 15 April 2015.
  77. ^ "The Best of Times". simontesler.com. Retrieved 23 January 2024.

Sources

[edit]
  • Tesler, Brian (2006). Before I Forget: A Family Memoir. Bridport, England: Mind Advertising. ISBN 978-0-9554515-0-8.
  • Tesler, Brian (2016). The Best of Times: A personal history of British television 1952-1994. Birmingham: Kaleidoscope Publishing. ISBN 978-1-900203-63-0.
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